The Chairman of the Management Committee of the Reproduction Rights Society of Nigeria (REPRONIG), Dr. Wale Okediran, has called on Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to sign up for licensing so that authors are paid whenever their works are photocopied or shared.

Okediran, who is also Secretary General of the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA), made the call on Saturday, October 24, 2026, during Beyond the Headlines, hosted by Dr. Uchenna Cyril Anioke on Freedom Square TV and streamed live on YouTube and Facebook. The programme’s theme was “Moving African Writers from Poverty to Prosperity”.

He said the main obstacle is awareness. During REPRONIG’s ongoing zonal advocacy, which took him to Birnin Kebbi in the Northwest two days earlier and to Port Harcourt the previous day, he found that many university teachers who write textbooks did not know they were entitled to payment. “They were shocked. They didn’t believe it,” he said.

Okediran explained that authors cannot realistically trace every photocopying centre, which is why REPRONIG exists. The society holds a legal mandate to represent rights holders, license institutions and collect royalties on their behalf. Authors register through the REPRONIG Digital Rights Management System (DRMS) mobile app, where they upload their names and works, track revenue and royalties, and leave the rest to the society.

“This issue of reproduction rights is backed by law,” he said, warning that any higher institution that encourages unauthorised photocopying without compensating rights owners can be sued. He cited Copy Ghana, which earlier this year successfully sued a university for a large sum for violating reproduction rights law. He also pointed to Malawi, a country of about 30-odd million people, which he said earns about $500,000 almost every year from reproduction rights.

REPRONIG was established in 2000 and, he said, suffered a downturn but is “back on stream”. He urged institutions to support the drive by signing up. “Gone should be the days when some universities or institutes of higher learning will just take somebody’s intellectual property and be sharing it without recourse to the law,” he said.

During the advocacy visit to Kebbi, traditional creatives, including Hausa poets and griots, asked that sensitisation workshops be held in indigenous languages. Okediran said REPRONIG is working on this so that creatives in Nigeria can “rub shoulders” with colleagues abroad who earn good money from their work